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Amazon has scotched reports that it plans to open bricks-and-mortar outlets; five of the nation’s largest publishers have formed a coalition to take on the e-reader market; sub-Saharan Africa’s threatened literary heritage now has a permanent home; one of the world’s most famous LGBT bookstores is closing its doors; and other news.
Plastic Logic has added a bundle of science and tech periodicals to its digital offerings; public outcry in California has led to the limited reopening of two library locations; library cuts are looming in the U.K.; the late Frank McCourt has been honored by Congress; and other news.
The manuscript of A Christmas Carol is at the Morgan in NYC, and online for the first time via the NYT; hard times continue for independent booksellers; the 2010 Canada Reads list has been unveiled; publishing exec Philip Turner is launching a new imprint; Hachette has restructured its Headline brand; and other news.
Google is allowing newspapers and other media sites to limit free access; culture ministers in the EU want a coordinated alternative to private-sector digitization schemes; the rise in e-reader sales is expected to spur a piracy boom; one of Britain’s classic red phone boxes has been reborn as a lending library; and other news.
In October MTV’s college network, mtvU, surprised some of its more literary-minded viewers when it named Iranian poet Simin Behbahani as its next poet laureate. She is only the second poet, following John Ashbery, to hold the honorary post.
Officials are assessing damages after a fire ripped through a New Jersey public library; a literary landmark in Seattle is facing a choice between relocation and closure; a Massachusetts bookstore marked Black Friday by raising prices; Bloomberg Press is closing its doors; and other news.
High demand is keeping the Nook out of stores for another week; a major literary center will open next year at Melbourne’s State Library; one of the United Arab Emirates has an ambitious plan to hand out free books; the cash-strapped Washington Post is experimenting with an online bookstore; and other news.
Amazon has treated the six-inch Kindle to a pre-holiday upgrade; a book once owned by the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland is going up for auction; “tweets” need no longer be lost to posterity, thanks to a new publisher; potential customers will soon get an in-store look at the Nook, B&N promises; and other news.
British publishers are celebrating a bill that calls for tougher digital copyright rules; a prospective buyer is offering hope for the employees of a troubled Arizona paper; Steve Almond’s new publisher is Harvard’s print-on-demand bot; and other news.
Experts continue to warn about the implications of the new Google deal for “copyright orphans”; a museum of storytelling is planned in Oxford; Albert Camus’s son is fighting the “Panthéonization” of his father; the troubled Sun-Times Media Group has a new head; Apple is keeping mum on whether it has e-reader ambitions; and other news.
